Hans Enoch Nielson Wight was born July 29, 1889, in Hyrum, Utah, USA. His father was Joseph Moroni Wight, and his mother’s maiden name was Cynthia Elnora Nielson. Joseph was born in 1844 in Hume, New York, and as a seven-year-old travelled west in the year 1851 with his LDS (Mormon) pioneer family. In line with LDS teachings of the time, Joseph became a polygamist and had two wives. Cynthia was his second wife. She was born in Weber County, Utah, in 1860.
Hans was the sixth child born to Joseph and Cynthia, but only the second to live past infancy. After his birth, his parents were more successful and brought eight more children into the world, all but one of whom lived to adulthood.
In the late 1880s, the LDS Church was sending members north to colonize Southern Alberta, and on June 8, 1891, when Hans was not yet two years old, his parents took their two living children and moved to the brand new community of Cardston, Alberta, snuggled on the edge of the vast, untamed, Canadian prairie. Hans learned to fish and hunt, and even before his teenage years he was an expert marksman. During the day in his father’s blacksmith shop, he learned to be a blacksmith, a wheelwright, and a carpenter, and in the evening he studied books. While finishing high school, he learned to play several instruments. He was a member of the Cardston Military Band. He became a certified machinist, a master electrician, and a licensed plumber. Because he drove a tractor, aborigine friends on the Blood reservation next to Cardston called him Iron Horse. Some remained life-long friends.
On August 1, 1908, when nineteen years old, Hans went to Utah to attend Brigham Young College in Logan. He also studied through correspondence courses at the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois, the University of Missouri, and the Alberta Institute of Technology and Art, obtaining degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering.
For the first six years of his professional career, he worked for the US Reclamation Service on the St. Mary’s River project in Montana, but he still spent his weekends in Cardston, which was only twenty miles away. On one of these weekends, he met a young lady named Alice McClung from northern Ireland who was a recent convert to the LDS Church. On January 11, 1911, Alice became Mrs. Hans E. Wight. He was not quite 22 years old and she was 20.
An aside: Five years later, Hans’s younger brother Eugene married Alice’s younger sister Jenny, and their two families generated double cousins who grew up very close.
At that time the LDS Church was constructing a temple in Cardston; it was to be used to perform certain sacred ceremonies, and Hans was offered a job as construction engineer, thus beginning his professional life in Canada.
When the main part of the construction was finished, he accepted a position in Drumheller, Alberta, where, as a mine surveyor and master mechanic, he was instrumental in the development of its huge coal resources. He remained in Drumheller ten years. In addition to his mining duties he also taught night classes in mechanical, electrical, and steam engineering. When his family finally left Drumheller, he had three children: Elizabeth (Bessie) who was 14, Marjorie (Marge) who was 7, and Eileen who was 5.
To be nearer to the LDS community, he moved his family to Taber, Alberta, in 1926. He had obtained the position of Chief Engineer and Master Mechanic for the Leland Coal Company based in Chicago. He was responsible for all mine maintenance both above and below ground. In addition to its large land holdings and mining operations, Leland Coal supplied the district with electricity. Their electric system was later purchased by the Calgary Power Company, and Hans became involved in extending power lines throughout Southern Alberta as well as in building power and light systems for its towns. Soon he relocated to Lethbridge, Alberta. However, his Calgary Power Company job required that he be away from home too much, so he resigned and accepted a position at the newly constructed Lethbridge Government Grain and Storage Elevator.
In 1935, Hans campaigned for the new Social Credit Party and was elected Member of the Alberta legislative assembly (MLA) for Lethbridge by a landslide. In 1937, he resigned under pressure. Someone was leaking sensitive political information to the Lethbridge Herald, and Social Credit leadership suspected him (probably correctly). He moved to Calgary and became Chief Engineer of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Calgary department store where he remained until World War II.
In 1941 Hans left the Hudson’s Bay Company and enlisted at the rank of Pilot Officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). He had hoped to work on the Alaskan Highway as an engineer, but was instead deployed to air bases across the Prairie Provinces and Newfoundland where he was charged with maintaining and constructing airbase facilities. At the same time, he was often assigned to organize recreation and entertainment for the airmen.
He was released from active duty with the rank of Flight Lieutenant in February, 1945, and moved to Bremerton, Washington, where he was hired as an electrical engineer repairing American ships, mostly destroyers, damaged in Pacific Ocean warfare. He performed this work until the Japanese surrender. Then he moved to Salt Lake City, Utah.
Hans was 55 years old when he returned to the USA, and he remained there the remainder of his life working as surveyor, city engineer, construction engineer, and city manager in cities throughout northern Utah. He also lived in Los Angeles where he was employed in the development of the San Clemente Island Missile Base for the US military.
He died in Salt lake City, Utah on October 12, 1965, at 76 years of age, leaving behind his wife Alice and their three daughters. Although only the oldest daughter married, she had seven children, and those children now have over one hundred descendants.
The biography is compiled by Howard Shafer, Grandson based on the following sources
EXPERIENCES OF CYNTHIA ELNORA NIELSEN WIGHT from her diaries and journals: 1890 to 1943, edited by Alice W. Terry; A LIFE OF SERVICE: HANS ENOCH NIELSON WIGHT as revealed through his diaries and by his family, edited by Marjorie Wight and Eileen Wight; BACKWARD GLANCES: Stories of and by our Wight ancestors, compiled by Eileen Wight and Marjorie Wight
A more detailed biography is found in file 20181046052